Ex-Navy SEAL: Bin Laden Book About Honor, Not Politics

The retired Navy SEAL who wrote a book on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden tells CBS “60 Minutes” that “No Easy Day” is not a political statement.

His book, rather, is timed to commemorate the 9/11 terrorist attacks and give credit to the hundreds of people whose work made the bin Laden mission a success, the retired SEAL, who has been identified as Matt Bissonnette, said.

“If these – crazies on either side of the aisle want to make it political, shame on them,” Bissonnette tells “60 Minutes” interviewer Scott Pelley in excerpts televised on “The CBS Evening News” on Wednesday. “This is a book about September 11th, and it needs to rest on September 11th. Not be brought into the political arena, because this – this has nothing to do with politics.”

The full “60 Minutes” interview will be broadcast on Sept. 9, two days before “No Easy Day” was scheduled to go on sale. The publication date was moved up a week by publisher Penguin Group (USA)'s Dutton imprint.

Bissonnette’s face is not shown in the “60 Minutes” interview – and he is identified by the name he used in writing the book, Mark Owen.

“We've disguised him and will keep his name confidential for his own safety,” Pelley said at the start of the report. “Owen was on the helicopter that crashed in bin Laden's compound. He was the second man in the room when bin Laden was shot, he took the photographs of the body that were never released.”